The Burford Branch

Tell us about your layout, where you put it, how you built it, how you operate it.
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jim s-w
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby jim s-w » Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:44 pm

Hi Martin this is the finest chain I've found so far (without going to a jewellers)

http://www.modellingtimbers.co.uk/19.html

There's some other handy stuff on this site too

HTH

Jim
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Thu Aug 10, 2017 9:13 am

Further work in progress

The roof has now been added to the brewery maltings, and these photos show the roof structure and the roof covering.

Aug 17 (6).jpg


I find it best to fix the gutters first, and then match the eaves of the roof to fit.

Aug 17 (7).jpg


Aug 17 (8).jpg


The roof is 30-thou styrene sheet, which will be covered with laser-cut strips of Welsh slate.

Aug 17 (9).jpg


Aug 17 (10).jpg


The shot below was taken looking past the station building towards the goods yard, with the brewery on the right. As I predicted, the sack hoist on the maltings doesn’t look too chunky or over-scale when seen in context on the layout. (I checked the packet, and the chain I used is 40 links to the inch, ready-blackened.)

(The fact that one or other of the gate posts on the right is slightly out of true doesn’t bother me. I have seen enough wonky gate posts and leaning walls in real life to regard this as a normal situation.)

Aug 17 (11) (Edit).jpg


Rainwater pipes and the missing goods yard gate, which will open against the wall of the maltings, will be added later, plus various other small details. (The pillar box next to the brewery wall had gone AWOL when this shot was taken.)
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Sat Dec 23, 2017 3:40 pm

I have always regarded rolling stock as merely parts of the scenery that move but, rather than posting details of some of the Burford Branch rolling stock in this thread, I have followed convention and posted the first two of five intended items about Brown Vehicles on the Burford Branch in a separate thread under “Trains Model and Prototype - Coaches and NPCS” -

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=5660
Last edited by martin goodall on Sat Dec 23, 2017 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Sat Dec 23, 2017 5:09 pm

With Christmas fast approaching, I decided to upload all five articles on the current collection of Brown Vehicles running on the Burford Branch.

I shall have to model a prize cattle wagon (Beetle C) and Horse Box (Paco C) in order to cover the traffic needs of the branch. As I admitted in the first article in this series, there is very little justification for the two Fruit vans, but the three Siphons will be needed for milk traffic on the branch (although not all three on the same day).

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Will L
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Will L » Sat Dec 23, 2017 7:06 pm

Edited to remove duplication.
Last edited by Will L on Sun Dec 24, 2017 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Sat Dec 23, 2017 10:31 pm

Thanks, Will.

Link now added above.

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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Sat Dec 30, 2017 1:25 pm

I had hoped by now to be able to post here a set of photographs showing the completed models of the brewery buildings which were seen earlier while they were under construction. But there has been a distinct lack of progress in the past couple of months (due to other calls on my time having taken priority), and so it may be a little while before these buildings finally reach completion.

However, it occurred to me that in the meantime, I could post up some photographs I took earlier of the initial stages in the construction of the overline bridge on the layout. This had to be designed to fit the site, and so is not based on any particular prototype, although I did look at photos of the ‘Ballasoe Bridge’ near Witney, and also the bridge at Swanage that spans the line there at roughly the same place in the station layout. I also made use of the information in L V Wood’s Bridges for Modellers .

Bridge 1.jpg


Bridge 2.jpg


Bridge 3.jpg


Bridge 4.jpg


I can’t remember why I decided to build the bridge around a wooden core. It just seemed a good idea at the time, although building the entire structure from styrene sheet would have been just as easy.

Bridge 5.jpg


Bridge 6.jpg


An embankment will be built up around the end of the bridge nearest the camera (when I get ‘a round tuit’).

Bridge 7.jpg


One of my very bad habits is to work on a model up to a certain point, and then to leave it in an uncompleted state (sometimes for several years!) while I turn to other things. The same fate has befallen this model, and so it is still awaiting cladding with stonework, and the completion of the road surface and other details.
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Tue Jan 30, 2018 3:13 pm

I have at last completed the brewery maltings, consisting of a two-storey floor maltings (plus loft for storing the sacks of barley to await processing) and a malt kiln behind. This is the ‘new’ maltings, which replaced the original maltings that were truncated to make way for redevelopment and expansion of the brewery at the end of the 19th century, the remains of which (including the old malt kiln) are now used as the brewery stores for barrels and crates of beer awaiting dispatch. Parts of that building have previously been illustrated, but the old malt kiln still awaits the completion of its roof, which is the next job on my ‘to do’ list. But I can now upload photos of the ‘new’ maltings, now that this has finally been completed.

The first photo starts where we left off on 10 August last year. The Victorian postbox has now been properly ‘planted’ in the pavement, and various other missing details have been added.

959.JPG


961.JPG


If the photos below are compared with the photos posted last August, it will be seen that in addition to completing the roofs on the maltings and on the new malt kiln, I have weathered the walls of the maltings, for which I used real soot. This certainly adds to the character of the building, and is a reminder that the environs of railway stations in the days of steam were far from clean, even in a country town in the Cotswolds.

955.JPG


Just to recap, the stone walls are made from Wills scenic sheet SS MP 215 “Limewashed Stone”, which being about 60-thou thick can be used structurally without any strengthening or bracing. I use artist’s acrylics for colouring (Raw Sienna, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White in varying combinations to reproduce the colour of Cotswold stone). Care needs to be taken to avoid a build-up of paint around door and window openings.

957.JPG


The slatted roof vent was built up with Evergreen styrene strip, cut with a North West Short Lines ‘Chopper’ to ensure uniform length of the louvres. I try to give all paintwork the look of rather ‘tired’ paint. This effect was produced by painting the woodwork with Humbrol Matt 94. When this had dried thoroughly, the same colour was mixed with Matt White, and dry-brushed over the surface to give a mottled effect.

Earlier photos posted here have shown the underlying roof structure, which was then covered with 30-thou styrene sheet. The Welsh slate covering consists of self-adhesive laser-cut paper strips. It was far too dark as supplied, and had to be painted a lighter shade of grey, using Humbrol enamel (Matt 64), with lighter streaks of Matt 147, liberally diluted with turps.

The staining on the roof of the malt kiln is based on the actual staining seen in photos of the prototype (Donnington Brewery, near Stow-on-the Wold) which I took some 40 years ago. I used Matt 147 for the leached out runs, and dry black poster powder for the black staining. The finishing touch was the addition of lead flashing, comprising strips of typing paper painted very light grey.

952.JPG


953.JPG


946.JPG


962.JPG
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Le Corbusier
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Le Corbusier » Tue Jan 30, 2018 4:32 pm

Wonderful ... thanks for posting :thumb
Tim Lee

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RobM
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby RobM » Tue Jan 30, 2018 5:19 pm

Very impressive Martin. You succeeded where I failed with louvre vents. Mine just shrivelled when the plastic weld dried, although they were a scale 6' in length, perhaps a bit over zealous with the weld, ended up making a 'solid' vent from styrene which I then produced a mould and ended up casting in resin as can be seen on my Mount Woodville boiler house.
Rob

Alan Woodard
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Alan Woodard » Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:35 pm

Beautiful modelling Martin. Looking forward to more photos.

Alan.

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ginger_giant
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby ginger_giant » Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:47 pm

Apart from the superb modelling, what also impresses me is the overall colour of the scenes. I've been dropping in on this topic now and again but do find it very evocative.

Excellent work I can only dream of aspiring to such standards.

martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Tue Jan 30, 2018 9:08 pm

RobM wrote:Very impressive Martin. You succeeded where I failed with louvre vents. Mine just shrivelled when the plastic weld dried, although they were a scale 6' in length, perhaps a bit over zealous with the weld, ended up making a 'solid' vent from styrene which I then produced a mould and ended up casting in resin as can be seen on my Mount Woodville boiler house.
Rob


Thanks, Rob. The louvres in my model are not unsupported. Between each 15-thou slat is a piece of 40-thou styrene strip, thus forming a solid structure. The slats are 6mm deep, and the 40-thou spacers are 3mm deep to keep them out of sight. (I checked before final assembly that, with the louvres set at an angle of 45 degrees, the spacers cannot be seen from a normal viewing angle.) I glued each slat to the spacer above it, before joining these to each other.

Since I posted the photos above, I have managed to find the negatives of some of the photos on which the model was based (albeit somewhat loosely). The first photo below is rather grainy, because it is a very much enlarged part of a distant view of the buildings at Donnington Brewery, showing the half hipped gable end of the floor maltings with the malt kiln behind.

2018-01-30_1.JPG


The second shot shows the staining on the roof referred to earlier. I used this photo and another from a slightly different angle to calculate the dimensions for the model, by counting slates (on the assumption that these are 24" x 12" [Duchess']).

2018-01-30_4 (2).JPG
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martin goodall
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Tue Jan 30, 2018 9:29 pm

ginger_giant wrote:..........what also impresses me is the overall colour of the scenes. I've been dropping in on this topic now and again but do find it very evocative.


I do have a bit of 'thing' about colour. I make a definite effort to keep colours light, and reasonably subdued. One of my other hobbies is painting, and I learnt a long time ago to restrict my palette to a very limited range of colours. Both on the backscene and on the model buildings, I have confined myself (with very few exceptions) to Raw Sienna, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White.

The other feature I have tried to incorporate is 'aerial perspective' (otherwise known as 'perspective in colour'), whereby colours are lighter and tend to go towards the blue end of the spectrum the further away they are from the viewer. This is why the buildings at the back of the layout are noticeably lighter in colour than those nearer the front. I have also assumed that the rear buildings are mainly faced with ashlar masonry, and probably also limewashed. [Note that limewash is not white; its colour is determined by the colour of the sand used in the mix, which in the Cotswolds is a light creamy buff.] Whereas buildings like the maltings are constructed of coursed rubblestone, which in the Cotswolds is not at all rough in texture; hence the use of Wills limewashed stone sheets to represent this stone, rather than the much more chunky alternative, which I have reserved for the bridge and retaining walls.

Colin Parks

Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Colin Parks » Tue Jan 30, 2018 9:36 pm

Hi Martin,

Your architectural models remind me of Pendon colour tones. It really is an impresseive set of buildings, with the positioning of the stone-built and more textured structures to the fore, with the plainer, rendered walls of the others behind giving the impression (to me) of fading into the background.

All the best,

Colin

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Le Corbusier
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Le Corbusier » Tue Jan 30, 2018 9:45 pm

martin goodall wrote: [Note that limewash is not white; its colour is determined by the colour of the sand used in the mix, which in the Cotswolds is a light creamy buff.]


Martin,

I am interested by this. I have used limewash quite extensively in building restorations, but it has always been just limewash - ie lime putty/paste watered down and then applied by brush. I have used pigment occasionally but this is usually internal work and more often that not where pigment is required it is with distemper rather than simple limewash.

What you describe is something different. I have come across sand and lime mixes as a render coat (where the sand choice does indeed effect the colour), but again this is different to what you describe.

Would you be able to point me in a direction where I can find more out about this technique?

Tim
Tim Lee

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ginger_giant
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby ginger_giant » Tue Jan 30, 2018 10:39 pm

martin goodall wrote:Both on the backscene and on the model buildings, I have confined myself (with very few exceptions) to Raw Sienna, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White.


Thank you Martin for revealing your paint palette. I soon need to think about painting a back-scene for my little project. But as I've not a applied paint to a canvas for many a year I'm not sure I'm brave enough to be so restrictive. I can but try though.

Cheers
Ian

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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Tue Jan 30, 2018 11:25 pm

Ian, you will find more details of the colours I used for painting the backscene in a two-part article I wrote in MRJ 220 & 221. The actual painting was covered in the second article.

There are also two books about creating a backscene, one by Paul Bambrick and the other by David Wright.
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Tue Jan 30, 2018 11:45 pm

In answer to Tim, the outside of our old house is limewashed. We had the limewash redone a few years ago, and in addition to slaked lime and water, sand was added to the mix, and it was this which imparted the colour to the mix. We chose the sand to give us the colour we wanted. No pigment was used. I confirm that the texture is sandy to the touch, but I would not describe it as a render.

We were advised by an expert from Devon, and were assured that this is the traditional method. Our builders needed some persuasion to adopt traditional methods and materials in the various work that was being carried out, but we got them over the steep learning curve. When dealing with a listed building, this is an important consideration.

Having looked at other examples of lime-washing, I would accept that they are not always as sandy as our own example, but I have not seen an example finished in white. (And I absolutely hate 'Snowcem' or other similar paints! Stone walls must be allowed to breathe. Damp is the penalty if this is ignored.)

David Thorpe

Re: The Burford Branch

Postby David Thorpe » Wed Jan 31, 2018 12:02 am

I've only just started reading this thread and am going to have to sit down and give it proper attention as there's so much good stuff on atmosphere and buildings, both of which I'm having some trouble with. Really helpful, thanks.

DT

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Le Corbusier
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Le Corbusier » Wed Jan 31, 2018 7:40 am

martin goodall wrote:In answer to Tim, the outside of our old house is limewashed. We had the limewash redone a few years ago, and in addition to slaked lime and water, sand was added to the mix, and it was this which imparted the colour to the mix. We chose the sand to give us the colour we wanted. No pigment was used. I confirm that the texture is sandy to the touch, but I would not describe it as a render.

We were advised by an expert from Devon, and were assured that this is the traditional method. Our builders needed some persuasion to adopt traditional methods and materials in the various work that was being carried out, but we got them over the steep learning curve. When dealing with a listed building, this is an important consideration.

Having looked at other examples of lime-washing, I would accept that they are not always as sandy as our own example, but I have not seen an example finished in white. (And I absolutely hate 'Snowcem' or other similar paints! Stone walls must be allowed to breathe. Damp is the penalty if this is ignored.)

Thanks Martin,

That is very interesting.

I wasn't questioning the veracity of your statement ... I am no expert (though I have been on a couple of lime courses) ... I was just curious beyond railway modelling. I am always looking for new techniques. The truth you quickly learn in my profession (unless you are particularly arrogant) is that the real knowledge and expertise within any specialist craft lies with the craftsmen ... they do it all day every day to a high standard, are steeped in both the materials and tradition and are well worth listening to. I have built up a pretty good catalogue of what not to do over time, but am continually learning.

For what its worth, all the lime washes and distempers I have used have a lovely soft colouring with an almost dusty finish which beautifully compliments natural materials, and as you say, very importantly they breathe ... a wonderful material.

Thanks again ... more research beckons.

Tim
Tim Lee

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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Wed Jan 31, 2018 2:28 pm

I must avoid turning this thread into a discussion on vernacular architecture (even though it’s a subject which fascinates me – far more so than the working parts of a locomotive!), but there are one or two thoughts that have been prompted by Tim Lee’s comments.

First, the thought occurs to me that in the Cotswolds they probably used stone dust in the limewash mix, rather than sand, which would make the limewash the same colour as the stone. This is only a supposition, so if anyone knows for sure, it would be interesting to have confirmation of this.

Second, the rougher examples of coursed rubblestone walls in the Cotswolds were almost certainly not intended to be exposed to the vulgar gaze of the public; the wall would have been rendered, probably with lime plaster, at least on the principal frontage facing towards the road. On quite a few of these buildings you will come across crude chisel marks on the face of the stone. The stonemasons wouldn’t have wasted time doing this for fun; this would have been done to give a key for the render.

Finally, here’s a “QI”-style question. What is the principal building material from which the majority of vernacular buildings in Burford are constructed? If you give the obvious answer “stone”, the lights will flash, the klaxon will sound and you’ll lose umpteen points. The correct answer is timber. Most of the buildings in Burford (and in many other country towns in the southern half of England) are timber-framed, and the timber frame would originally have been exposed, with various types of infill between the framing. In Burford, it was only in the 17th century that these buildings began to be faced with stone, but this was mere facadism, and when you see what appears to be a 17th or 18th century stone building in Burford, it is quite probably a timber-framed building behind the façade. Some of these date back as far as the 14th century.

These points do not apply, of course, to 19th century industrial buildings, such as most of the brewery buildings I have modelled. This explains why they have been roofed with Welsh slate, which would not have been seen in the Cotswolds until the second half of the 19th century. The older (now disused) malt kiln, from Garne’s brewery in Burford, which is the next building I have to complete, has a Cotswold stone roof, and I am still scratching my head as to precisely how to portray this. It will, however, (like the other models) be simply an “artist’s impression”. I have already decided that attempting to model the stone roofing in any detail would be a non-starter. I am currently experimenting with a hand-made rag paper, which has the right sort of texture.

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Noel
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Noel » Wed Jan 31, 2018 6:05 pm

martin goodall wrote:I must avoid turning this thread into a discussion on vernacular architecture


Don't see why, Martin [unless you want to start a new thread]. Any railway is/was related to its environment; even if that environment doesn't appear much on the layout, what the railway does, and how, and, if it was originally locally promoted at least, what with [in structure terms] still depends/depended on that environment. Even the major railways might still use the local vernacular for minor, or not so minor, buildings.
Regards
Noel

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Tim V
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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby Tim V » Thu Feb 01, 2018 7:01 pm

I drove through Burford today, didn't see the station anywhere ...

Did bump over some large flanges in the road!
Tim V
(Not all railways in Somerset went to Dorset)

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Re: The Burford Branch

Postby martin goodall » Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:45 pm

Various buildings in and around the former terminus were put to a variety of industrial uses after its closure in 1962, but the site was later cleared entirely, and a housing estate now stands on the site. The blanket mill, brewery and gasworks are also no more.

A visitor to the town would be forgiven for thinking that the station never existed.
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